so that we might repel it from Him. It has come in an authentic report, “None is more patient under hurt than God.” Attend, then, to what we have drawn your attention to.
(The Blessing Hidden within Trial)
Among this is love for the grateful. The Real describes Himself in His Book as loving the grateful, and gratitude is His description, for He is “Grateful, All-Knowing” [al-Baqara 2:158]. He loves in the servant only what is His own attribute and description. Gratitude concerns only blessings, not trial, as some without knowledge of realities claim. He, exalted is He, hides His blessing within His chastisement and His chastisement within His blessing. This confuses one ignorant of realities, the realities of the affair, who imagines he gives gratitude for trial. That is not correct.
It is like one drinking disagreeable medicine, which belongs among trials. Yet it is a trial for what perishes through it, the illness for which it was used. Pain is this medicine's enemy and what it seeks.
When trial comes upon this locus experiencing pain, the contender wishing to remove it from existence, the medicine, comes upon it. The locus finds aversion in this, yet knows a blessing lies folded within that disagreeable thing, since it removes pain. He therefore thanks God, exalted is He, for the blessing within it and is patient with the disagreeable use of it, knowing it seeks that pain to remove it. It strives only for this locus's comfort. Perceive this: for this reason he is grateful.
When he thanked Him for the blessing hidden within this
